By Amir Taheri, Special
Gulf News
September 12, 2007
For the past year at least, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the backbone of the Islamic Republic in Iran, has been engaged in a bloody war against Kurdish rebels in four provinces bordering Iraq.
Initially, the authorities in Tehran tried to keep the war a secret, referring to it only occasionally as " operations against evil-doers".
However, things changed last February when "evil-doers" destroyed an IRGC combat helicopter killing nine officers, including the regional military commander General Saeed Qahhari. The incident took place in a place called Jahannam-Darreh (Hell Valley) close to Khoy, a town in West Azerbaijan province where Kurds, though present in big numbers, form only a minority.
The IRGC retaliated with a series of attacks against alleged Kurdish rebel positions in the mountainous area around the border town of Salmas in which at least 17 "Kurdish evil-doers", including their overall local commander, a naturalised German citizen of Turkish-Kurdish origin, code-named Doctor Meraat, were killed.
Since then, the IRGC has issued cryptic reports about dozens of other "engagements" in which scores of policemen, border patrols and IRGC members have been killed or wounded while killing at least 100 Kurdish insurgents. full text
Initially, the authorities in Tehran tried to keep the war a secret, referring to it only occasionally as " operations against evil-doers".
However, things changed last February when "evil-doers" destroyed an IRGC combat helicopter killing nine officers, including the regional military commander General Saeed Qahhari. The incident took place in a place called Jahannam-Darreh (Hell Valley) close to Khoy, a town in West Azerbaijan province where Kurds, though present in big numbers, form only a minority.
The IRGC retaliated with a series of attacks against alleged Kurdish rebel positions in the mountainous area around the border town of Salmas in which at least 17 "Kurdish evil-doers", including their overall local commander, a naturalised German citizen of Turkish-Kurdish origin, code-named Doctor Meraat, were killed.
Since then, the IRGC has issued cryptic reports about dozens of other "engagements" in which scores of policemen, border patrols and IRGC members have been killed or wounded while killing at least 100 Kurdish insurgents. full text
0 comments:
Post a Comment